a collective dream journal project

Category Archives: women

“You cluck and they’ll cluck back,” a woman whispers in my ear. She’s been teaching herself to speak with fowl, mainly chickens and ducks. Everyone regards her as mad, of which she definitely seems — her hair is ragged and face gaunt. She wears a long grey trench coat and spends most of the time in the filthy street outside my work making strange noises. Come to think of it, she’s always there, no matter what time of day I pass. There’s a good chance she doesn’t sleep. She does have one thing working against the popular theory that she is insane, however, and that is that the fowl do talk back. That can’t be denied.
That same day she whispered those words in my ear I witnessed her speaking with the severed head of a duck. Its skin was iridescent, without feathers. And despite its dismembered state it was indeed clucking back at the old woman. It’s funny I say “old” when I refer to her . . . because she isn’t in fact old; she seems old, no, she seems ancient, but she is probably younger than me.
Anyways, she picks up this iridescent quacking duck head by its long neck, and I can see large fangs in its mouth. They look like the fangs of a rattlesnake. She’s unconcerned with them. So unconcerned that she begins petting them with her index finger, slowly gliding it over the white fangs. The duck seems to be charmed by the sensation and its eyes begin to roll around in its head. As they do so I notice a speck of green peeking through the white of its cornea; which, at an opportune moment, the woman pinches with her dirty nails and out slithers a long worm. I pick it up to get a closer look. The worm has a human face. My face.

I went up the black steps that were well lit. People waited for me as I banged through the safetygates with the key. I opened up the roof, but it was trashed. It was night. I lay down with my head on the edge. There was a blanket. I began to talk to the person next to me.

The night was long and filled with troupes of makeuped women. I strode into a cool neon lit bar. It was long and tables filled with laughter was a scent of energy thick and deep with currents. Any one person strolling in would have had to tear a hole into the vibe in order to break it’s lush cocaine undertow. The frolicking rocked their toothy bodies. A woman with electric blue braces smiled wide as the waxing cheshire moon. Her lips were glistening candy red. I came to attack someone. I came in with violence in the heart. It was only milky arms and smiles braced and eyelashes made of feather and black liner beaded with luminescent paint. Everyone was from pandora.

I didn’t stay there. Where I went was filled with tiny animals.

The next day you and I walked in a strange town. We found a rock with a historical leap. They told of how the huge gap over the water was usually crossed by a rope swing more than seven times a day. Although it was a long way down into the water, I took the leap with the rope in hand, swinging, even kicking off against the water. I made it to the other side. You followed me. And I saw you come across. &~~

We must use the alien technology. In the real quiet air of the salon you wanted to stay. The people were in place but filling the air with self un-poisoned by some erractic music. They were filled with a self-possession that stills people like jazz mutes the motion and they wore fedoras and stares; the whole thing of it you liked. We sat and had conversations while it rained. Alien food, filets, and pink almost creamed roe. A green cat stared, a tiny neonate on a lap peered over darkened wood. Tea brewed. The woman with silver embellishments and turquoise, darked eyes, went back to sleep in the hotel room for five days of sleep, happy song on her lips to be alone. I held cards in my hand and tried to say we must never say what we saw here. I was corrected. We must share the technology. IN an instant, almost a lump in my throat I saw why. It was a series of wooden rails heading skyward in a factory. There was a whirring and a flapping of tiny wooden flaps. I nailed in nails. It was so simple and yet it had a perfection I cannot name. I watched her leave to go sleep. Her beauty and self-suficiency were inside me like a memory. I stood shaking the blue skirt filled with cranberry paisley, and silver near a mirror above a small wooden table. I went out into the darkness and entered a convenience store somewhere at midnight on a hill where you could feel the earth larger than the buildings;a manna pool around it’s concrete shell. It was one of those places that is respite because it has human build to it in a place of large earth-dark forces, where wisps of heather, and moor grass even appearing as spirits in the halogen lights. Inside past the smoked bullet proof glass, the proprietess behind her small packs of wares, a larder of tiny pills, and impersonal cartons of condoms, or advil(either really). I turned and the tiny shack opened into the dim almost waxy, paraffin of music venue floors. Wooden equipment ramps, signage indicating the temporal atmosphere of an occasion. I saw pin up magnets and then I talked to the woman with red lips and her name was Susanna Lou or some other staged, two-part name. She invited me somewhere to perform.

I am still kind of in shock. I watched the plane transform as it passed two other planes. It roared and broke. Some one said “that’s not normal” It looked like bodies were falling. A body plummeted toward and smacked against the wall of the pool and into it. I raced toward the steps. I was on the median between two pools. I looked down at the girl. Someone offered a red foam board for transport. She was small and conscious but not even bleeding. She was shaking. Her legs kept sticking straight up. I am dying, she said. She writhed painfully. I woke.

In the little alcove a man with brownish skin talked. The store had changed its name. It had been Trohve in hamden. Up a back stair. A woman with a child pressed so tightly into her chest wriggled into form from the sagging twin bed. Another appeared behind her, but it was a manish form that hugged me when I told him I speak arabic. It was odd. As We left to go get into the utility truuck, I saw Rupert Wolonski, head down. I said goodbye. The side of the truck said “Mannslers” or some other Germanic thing. It was the Olde tyme writing style that made me think I was part of a german company. I got into the passenger seat. The dark skinned cabbi got to the intersection again. He wanted to take me to the new side of town andl eave me there. I was indignant. What this again!? Take me to the other side of the highway and leave me by the bus stop! But still, of he goes to the left hand turn lane that takes me toward the new part of town.

Earlier I skipped a class. I watched the time 12:10, almost 12:15 I thought. I sat with my high school friend Chris H. He kept leaning toward me. He reminded me of some earlier kiss which really had never happened. I walked down fantastic stairs of some incredible design. The shag had tubes of color flaps. It was remarkable, though I don’t remember what we were saying. I was in a motel room. I was walking through a doorway, not locking it. Musical instruments play behind him. He talked about his girlfriend. I found myself at 433 West Creek Rd. or 6266 West Creek Rd where I grew up. I was upstairs. I was reading a poster. I placed two spray bottles near Williams pillow for the cats. My pants must have fallen down. I saw a naked girl in a room laughing. There was a sauna. It was an odd misplaced sexual energy.

They kept her tucked into a box for many years — actually it was more like a drawer. I walked by this gray steel drawer many times; it was in a school, high up, a good reach above my head. One day I heard wrestling around, the scrapping of metal — that’s when I first discovered her. She had forgotten how to speak. A few days later, I freed her in secret. Though the drawer was small, she unfolded herself into a fully grown woman. She was unsurprisingly daunt and covered in sores. Her fingers long, brittle, and unbending; her eyes hungry, narrow, and still.

I was teaching a class on mythology at the time and soon came across an ancient myth about a boxed girl and her detainers. As I was teaching about the myth a few of the people in attendance began to get up and leave the room. They were obviously uncomfortable with the subject. I knew I was striking a nerve, so I kept going. A homely woman with curly brown hair turned angry, she knew of the girl in the box drawer and knew that she had recently gone missing. Now she was blaming me for releasing her. I took her blame with satisfaction, hastily ended the lesson, and cursed her in front of the others. They all began to accuse her of evil. Not soon after the taunting began, her conscious broke and she began grieving in shame — explaining that she, and others, loved the girl . . . that they wanted her forever, and that now they would all be lost without her and their lives would hold no meaning.
We gave her no sympathy. We watched her cry. We tucked her into that small steel box. We walked away.

Years later our hearts began to heal and grow . . . for we truly love that box girl . . . and will never let her go. ♨

She’s nude, lying under a translucent veil. Her eyes are a hazy milky white . . . swirling. She questions me. Beckons me. Tempts me to follow her strange sting of nonsensical language. Without English words she explains what is wrong. She exposes each and every one of my crimes . . . the crime of breath . . . the crime of hunger . . . the crime of thought . . . the crime of motion.

Her breasts form a raised comforting shape, and her nipples, two dark patches beneath the fabric. She smiles, and instructs me to unhinge my soul — to make it spill out through my boney fingers . . . to never let it back into my body once it is free.

Her milky eyes swirling faster. . . . Blood is dripping off the moon. A fork lodged in my tongue.

I understand: “Write — with reckless abandon — write. But for the love of words — shatter your pen.” ♨

I’m in the back seat of a topless jeep with my friends, Patrick & Jen. It’s night. We are in city resembling Hanoi, Vietnam. After a few minutes we realize the driver has vanished, and we are headed, full speed, into oncoming, one-way traffic. I scramble to the front and attempt to gain control of the auto. I jerk the wheel and we go over the wide medium. The steering is awkward. I can barely gain control over the machine, but I manage to get us into the basement of a department store. People are telling me to go into a crowded room. The room is red and full of donkeys that have human heads. They are running in circles and merging into one another — the trunk of their bodies fuse and their heads and legs multiply. I reach out my neck and take a big bite out of one of beasts. Its flesh is flavorless and as cold as ice, there is no blood. A nude woman emerges from the tear in its skin. She dances before me and I quickly start to feel uncomfortable and decide to leave. ♨